Letters to the editor, February 13

Have you driven Interstate 35W south
from the Denton interchange lately? As you pass Apogee Stadium on your left,
look to the right and you will find a red sofa that has been on the roadside
for more than two weeks. The cushions — which are beginning to come apart, are
in the center section of the highway.

But don’t feel that southbound
passengers have the only view of Denton rubbish. Go to the Ponder exit, turn
around and come north. Look at the trash along the roadside and in the pasture
on the farm next to Apogee Stadium.

Beautiful sight, isn’t it?

We called the local Texas Department of
Transportation facility early last week and reported the sofa. Did we call the
wrong agency? Whose responsibility is roadside cleanup? Is this the picture of
our city that we want visitors to remember as they go through Denton?

John Lodge,

Denton

‘What’s
the message’?

At first blush it appears our good
friend Alice Gore was waxing anti-capitalist sentiments and opposed to air
pollution in her condemnation of ethanol [DRC, Jan. 29].

But it turns out that she’s just doing
what she’s always done — using twisted, cherry-picked information to lay the
ills of this world at the feet of God-hating, commie-loving liberals.

Ethanol production was the capitalistic
venture that joined environmental and energy concerns with free-market
principles. Corporate executives and investors made millions as agri-business
giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill produced a product we hoped would
emit less toxic pollutants into our air while reducing our dependency on
foreign oil and generating revenue for farmers.

Little did we realize at the time that
the energy expended to actually get the corn and other grass products out of
the ground and to the gas pump would create more CO2 emissions than it would
eliminate.

“It’s all the ‘rabid environmentalists’
fault” we hear from the right-wing echo chamber. Those spawn of some
obsessed tree-hugger from the 1970s and some holier-than-thou crusader who
works with the EPA.

So what does Gore and Bubba recommend to
right this wrong? Keep generating power from coal-fired power plants that spew
out 1.7 billion tons of CO2 each year along with other lung disease toxicants
like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury.

The tea party folks have insulated
themselves, immersed in right-wing media, for years. They’ve been fooled into
thinking a majority of the country agrees with them.

Now, they’re coming out of the Fox fog
aware of the pre-election prediction debacle, realizing they’re 50 years behind
the majority of the country. They were duped by Fox’s “landslide victory” call,
and they should be ashamed.

Today’s GOP is unaware most of the
country has moved on. They spend resources on a state level to fight abortion
while people go hungry with no access to health care.

Now, stocks are soaring, home prices are
rising, big banks are being monitored and wars are ending. I’m sorry, but it’s
true, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise.

Bubba, Ray Roberts and several other
regular letter writers refuse to believe. They bolster their narrow attitudes
citing Fox as some sort of real news organization. This only proves that you
need to turn off this fount of misinformation.

The ever-shrinking DRC Opinion Page has
become full of childish name-calling. The desperation in these actions reflects
the fact that the economy is surging, people like Obamacare, and there’s no
real GOP candidate to look to 2016.

Now Cruz, Cornyn and Inhofe have proven
that only Texas and Oklahoma are home to people so easily fooled.
Low-information voters “guided” by their clergy are a dangerous voting block.

Please get out and vote intelligently in
2014 and 2016.

Lainey Black,

Denton

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